Ear piercing is a common practice to allow jewelry and other decorative matter to be worn on or about a human ear. An ear piercing involves making a hole through one's earlobe or another spot on one's ear in order to allow a post of a piece of jewelry to extend there in or there through to effectively mount the jewelry to one's ear. The post of jewelry can generally extend through one's ear and be secured by attaching a backing element to the post on the rear side of one's ear. Other securing methods known in the art may also be used.
Some people have sought to enlarge the opening provided by traditional ear piercing. The enlargement is sometimes known as stretching in the field of body piercing. The enlargement or stretching in an earlobe piercing is generally achieved by inserting progressively larger objects, in small increments, over time into the earlobe piercing to expand the opening. Some enlarged earlobe openings can reach sizes in the range of 4 mm to 16 mm or more.
When openings are enlarged, traditional ear jewelry having a posts sized for traditional sized ear piercings will no longer be wearable because the enlarged opening will be too big to hold the relatively small diameter post of traditional earlobe wear.
The present inventor recognized the need for ear wear that enables persons with gauged, stretched, or enlarged openings in their ears to wear conventional earrings, which have conventional sized posts.